Treasury vindicates Ferdinand Waititu over budget mix-up

What you need to know:

  • In a statement, Treasury indicated that the problem was not only in Kiambu, but in several other counties.

  • Treasury said counties should have filled in their budgets and expenditures on the ‘GOK Ifmis budget execution by programmes.

  • Dr Thugge also directed counties to capture all revenues and expenditure transactions in the Ifmis.

The National Treasury has vindicated Kiambu Governor Ferdinand Waititu on the ‘abnormal expenditures’ in the county.

There might have been a mix-up in budget, revenue and expenditure reporting, Treasury said on Monday.

In a statement, Treasury indicated that the problem was not only in Kiambu, but in several other counties as well.

IFMIS

According to the statement, counties failed to use the Integrated Financial Management Information System (IFMIS) correctly as required by law, hence the audit confusion.

“The county financial statements by votes and economic items in IFMIS reflect the correct information as budgeted by counties. However, we note that a number of counties do not pay attention to the budget by programmes as required by the law,” stated the Principal Secretary of National Treasury Kamau Thugge in the statement.

Dr Thugge said some counties have been running the wrong report for budget execution by programmes and sub-programmes, “leading to wrong description of their programmes.”

BUDGET

Treasury said that counties were supposed to fill in their budgets and expenditures on the ‘GOK IFMIS budget execution by programmes and sub-programmes -County’ tab.

An official from the Council of Governors (GoG), said that the affected counties used ‘wrong templates’ to report in the Ifmis.

“The finance committee at the CoG perused through the 47 County Executive audit reports and managed to identify a trend in about 8 counties. The counties had their expenditure reports printed from IFMIS,” she stated.

She explained that the system is designed with budget codes which create standard chart of accounts for both national and county governments.

“The current standard chart of accounts was designed for national government and hence majority of the existing budget codes are national government aligned.

COMPLIANCE

“It is therefore possible that at the entry level some counties failed to describe their programmes and sub- programmes, hence during expenditure reporting the Ifmis would pick the mother programme code aligned to the national government creating an impression that the counties implemented national government programmes,” she explained.

Treasury sent copies of budget execution by programmes and sub-programmes to the counties.

“The County Executive Member of Finance is required to scrutinise the budget and financial statements from IFMIS to ensure that they reflect the correct information in compliance with the law,” read the statement.

Dr Thugge also directed counties to capture all revenues and expenditure transactions in the Ifmis.

REVENUES

“They are supposed to carry out periodic end closing procedures which include and not limited to capturing revenues received, all payments made, clearing unaccounted transactions and performing monthly bank reconciliations in the system,” he said.

The ministry clarified the issue after an audit report showed that Kiambu County spent Sh2.1 billion on national government functions.

Some of the shocking details in the report which was recently presented before the Senate Public Accounts and Investments Committee included money for coordinating State House functions, South Sudan Peace process, free primary education and payments to retired Presidents.

These allocations, according to the Controller of Budget Agnes Odhiambo, were not captured in the 2017/2018 annual and supplementary budgets.